Author: Jacques Delacroix

Le Contrôle des armes aux Etats-Unis ; l’essort économique français

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Economics , ,

Un membre de la legislature de l’état de Californie est accusé par le FBI de traffic d’armes massif, des fusils d’assaut militaires, pour être précis. C’est un élu de San Francisco, ville notoirement de gauche. Il est bien connu pour ses campagnes bruyantes en faveur de la restriction du port d’arme (garanti par le Second Amendement à la Constitution des Etats-Unis adopté en 1789). Il va être mis en garde à vue incessamment. Il y a des brebis galeuses partout, après tout. En tous cas, a contrario, aucun élu notoirement favorable a ce droit constitutionel n’a jamais été accusée de quoi que ce soit sur ce plan-là.

Le slogan principal de ceux qui, come moi, désirent un population armée:

“Quand les armes sont hors-la-loi, seuls les hors-la-loi sont armés.”

L’évidence même!

Economie française: Selon l’administration américaine spécialisée*, le désert campagnard francais renferme 4 milliards de mètres cube de gas de schiste. Milliards! Ils sont tous fermés à l’exploitation à cause de l’influence des écologistes (dont le parti arrive rarement à percer aux élections). Il n’y a pas de travail pour les Français; c’est donc exactement le bon moment de garder bien enfermé à clef  un outil de travail essentiel! L’élite politique française agit comme si elle vivait en 1978 avec, devant elle, des possibilités infinies d’essort économique.

Et puis, il ne faut pas chagriner Poutine!

*US Energy Information Administration

Secession and libertarianism – Ukraine Edition

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , , , , , ,

The most basic rule of schoolyard behavior is this: Don’t challenge the school bully if your knees are buckling under you. Mr Obama keeps ignoring the rule, with predictable results: One tyrant, one despot after another receives his confirmation that the USA is no dangerous, no matter what you do. Thinking the US in not dangerous is very dangerous for the world. I keep challenging the ones and the others, including mainstream libertarians, to say what will, or should replace the pax americana that has given us relative peace since 1945. No one cares to answer.

This introduction, not by way of beginning to argue that the US should have gone to war over Crimea. I don’t believe it should have; I don’t even think the US should have risked war ever so little because of Crimea. I think rather that Mr Obama should have been absent, with a pass for the nurse’s office, for example. Neither am I being pathetically “realistic,” here. Mine is a principled position. Let me explain.

Anyone who has any libertarian fiber but who maintains his criticality should be instinctively in favor of secessions. Two reasons.

First if being governed is an assault on individual liberty, being governed by those who are unlike you in some fundamental way is a doubly liberticide. Fundamental differences include, but are not limited to, language. That’s because your language largely determines the way you see the world and your sensitivities, what’s important to you as a person. Governors who have different beliefs, who operate on the basis of different assumptions, who nurture different dislikes than you are bound to commit slow rape on you every day of your life. That’s true even if they harbor zero hostile intention toward you. And that’s unless you volunteer, of course, as many immigrants like me – do.

I wish good luck to the Catalan independentists and to the Scottish autonomists. I would even if you proved to me beyond the shadow of a doubt that powerful economic interests undergirth their efforts. It’s true that Catalonia is more prosperous than the rest of Spain. It does not prevent Catalans from feelings how they do. They probably would, if they were less prosperous. I don’t know if the Scots would like to split from the UK absent North Sea oil but, if they do, they do, and that’s it. I believe, of course, that the Tibetans have had a solid claim for secession for all the time they have been under Chinese rule. (And, yes, it may well be that the objective quality of their lives has improved under Chinese Communist Party dictatorship.)

Am I saying that it’s better to be oppressed by those you think of as your kin?

Yes.

The Crimean population overwhelmingly wanted secession from Ukraine. Without the presence of Russian guns, the referendum would have been, maybe, 76 % in favor rather than 96%. The final result would have been the same. It’s not difficult to entertain this double thought: Putin is a gangster and the Crimeans would rather be Russian citizens.

Speaking of Putin: The fact that he used exactly the same arguments as Hitler in 1939 does not logically imply that he did something like dismantling and gobbling up independent Czechoslovakia. The Czechs and the Slovaks, were not volunteers the way most Crimeans are. The annexation of Crimea by Russia changes little to all this. (See below.) Crimeans did not feel Ukrainian, overall and they were tired of being very poor under the Ukraine. They would rather be moderately poor as Russians. It’s not hard to believe either.

The second reason for libertarians to favor secession instinctively is that rational people cannot treat the boundaries of nation-states as if they were sacred, the way most governments pretend to do. At best, one could argue that that fiction contributes to world stability. (I doubt it but it’s not a stupid position.) Rather, the borders of existing nation-states are often the result of centuries of sometimes successful wars (France), or of recent shameless robbery of one’s neighbors (the US), or of colonial bureaucratic insouciance (Iraq). In some cases, the tracing of boundaries looks like a joke: Take for example the long penis-like extension of Afghanistan into China in the eastern part of the former country. The mapmaker, probably a junior English officer must have chuckled with relief in his loneliness.

National boundaries may be useful or even indispensable (to control entry, of undesirables, for example) that makes them a necessity, or a necessary evil. Nothing confers on them a status above critical thinking: Sometimes, the violation of existing borders should not be countenanced; sometimes, such violation deserves only a shrug.

Note with respect to the present annexation of Crimea by Russia following this secession, I am saying nothing about the ensuing strengthening of the Russian kleptocracy. The encouragement of tyrants inherent in the Putin impunity also belongs in another essay.

The fact is that the prevention of secession has always produced tons of mischief, most of it violent, much of it an affront to basic human decency.

Hitler used the existence of a sizable German minority in a strategically important part of Czechoslovakia, of smaller Hungarians-speaking and of Ukrainian-speaking smaller minorities elsewhere to start World War II. It’s possible, even likely that Hitler would have used another excuse absent this one. But linguistic minority aspirations gave a cover of semi-legitimacy to his aggressive action. Without such legitimacy, it is quite conceivable that British and French public opinions would have demanded that Hitler be stopped while it was still possible. (The whole sorry story of Western passivity and vacillation in 1938-39 is recounted in minute, hour-by hour detail in William Shirer’ s classic: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.)

In more recent times, we witnessed violent and massive ethnic cleansing in Kosovo , the three-year long siege of a large city one hour flight from Rome, Sarajevo, and the starvation and daily bombing of its civilian population, and the massacre of thousands of men and boys, also in Bosnia. Most of these horrors could have been avoided by finely wrought enough secessions, even at county level if necessary.

A contrario examples abound of the healthful, virtuous nature of secession as a solution to intercommunal tensions. Some come from the most unlikely places.

The dissolution of Czechoslovakia – a radical form of secession – in 1993 was so peaceful that it went almost unperceived . The resulting Czech and Slovak Republics have since continued separately on their fairly prosperous paths. They maintain sound relationships as good neighbors (as very good neighbors, more or less like the US and Canada).

Paradoxically, today’s Iraq offers a striking example of the virtuousness of secession. The world follows with a tired eye Iraqi Arabs eviscerating each other along communal lines. That is, the Sunni Muslim Arabs there and the Shiite Muslim Arabs there are slaughtering each other every day, same as when the presence of Americans was said to cause all the murderous civil strife. Many Sunnis and many Shiites consider themselves members of existentially different groups. They do so for reasons that are probably difficult for Westerners to understand (except those who remember the Wars of Religion in Europe, of course, between 1520 and 1648.) It matters not; as far as they are concerned, those are reasons worth killing and dying for. Keeping them bottled up together, forced co-habitation, is not likely to attenuate these sentiments. (Think of ill-matched college roommates.)

In the meantime, you hardly ever hear of the Northern third of the same country, bloodied Iraq. I refer to “Kurdistan,” still formally a part of the Iraqi republic. Kurdistan, which does not exist officially, is people mostly by Kurds, a group with a distinctive language unrelated to Arabic. They comprise both Sunnis and Shiites. As far as the facts on the ground are concerned, Iraqi “Kurdistan” has achieved secession from its bloodied mother country. No shot was fired in spite of the quick-trigger violence of the Middle-East. The Kurdish area is so prosperous and so peaceful that others go there on vacation. The vacationers are first of all, Arabs from other parts of Iraq seeking relief from incessant violence in their part of the country. Second, Turks are crossing their southern border in increasing numbers for the same purpose . (May of those Turkish tourists are probably themselves ethnic Kurds.)

And we should not lose track of the fact that the 25 years of Saddam tyranny over all of Iraq, accompanied by internal massacres and two wars he started deliberately found what legitimacy it possessed in the supposedly sacred duty to keep Iraq unified. (Keep in mind that the Saddamite regime utterly lacked traditional legitimacy and religious legitimacy, or the political legitimacy that comes from winning fair elections, or any other source of legitimacy.)

Had Iraq broken up earlier into a Kurdish north, a Sunni center and a Shiite south, the world and, especially, the martyred Iraqi people, would have been spared enormous misery. It’s not too late to achieve this end.

I am speculating that many people’s unexamined attachment to the general concept of national border harks back to an earlier time, a time when they were coterminous with economic boundaries and with information boundaries. Not long ago, French citizens ate almost only French food, they wore only French-made clothing (there was even a lively traffic in illegal, smuggled blue jeans), and heard and read only news originating in France in French. All was produced almost entirely with French capital. National boundaries were then the very containers of our existence defined in the most concrete ways. None of this is true anymore for most countries. Borders are porous to most things including words (if not yet to people). Many people are thus ready to fight for a reality that disappeared quite a while ago.

A major more or less unintended effect of this pursuit of ghosts is that it easily turns to bloodshed, domestic and international. So, many Spaniard are resisting the threatened secession of Catalonia as if it would become a catastrophe of sorts for them. There is still little realization that nations that perceived themselves as homogeneous (for whatever reason) are spared major conflicts, including civil conflict. Homogeneous Denmark, with a similar level of development, is more peaceful than bi-community (linguistic communities) Belgium. Either a Walloon or a Flemish secession there would improve the lives of both Walloon and Fleming.

Secession is usually a good thing overall, for peace, and for individual liberties. Let them go and they will lose the ability to stab you in your own kitchen with your own kitchen knife. They may even become your friends, after a while.

N.B. I still have not heard anyone, or heard of anyone saying that he regretted voting for Obama. Amazing!

I Used to Be French:….

Jacques Delacroix Current Events

 I Used to Be French: an  Immature Autobiography

Soon for sale from my blog: factsmatter.wordpress.com

Ukraine

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , ,

The Russian gangster state is about to take the Ukraine apart as I write.

This is not our fight, I think. There are no big American interests at stake. American lives are not endangered. As I write, there is not big humanitarian crisis (as there is in Syria, and continuing) either.

I hope we  mostly agree in this country that national borders are not sacred. We are not sworn to go to war to have them protected. If the Ukraine becomes two states  or if a part of it becomes incorporated into Russia, that’s alright with me. I hope it happens quickly and with little bloodletting.

The argument that we are on the side of Ukrainian democrats is not very convincing, right now. I just don’t know. I don’t think they know.

The main downside of this crisis, as I see it, is that President Obama was not able to keep his big mouth shut. He just gave another reason for political mafiosi, tin-pot dictators, savage tyrants, and pure fascist states such as Iran and North Korea to consider the US a paper tiger. That is very dangerous. It leads to gambling miscalculations, a la Saddam Hussein.

Le nouveau racisme américain et l’impérialisme français

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, History, Law, Politics , , , , , ,

La tache est infinie d’eduquer les Francais pour leur faire jeter aux orties les cliches anti-Americains plus ou moins malveillants qu’ils trainent depuis soixante ans. Comme personne d’autre ne le fait, je me porte volontaire, de temps en temps, pour les aider a les remplacer par des cliches plus frais sur les Etats-Unis.

La Cour d’Appel qui correspond a la region de San Francisco vient de donner raison au directeur d’une ecole secondaire qui avait interdit a ses eleves le port ou l’affichage du drapeau …americain. Le tribunal a donne pour raison que ce drapeau risquait d’offenser les “Mexicains” de l’ecole.

Le debut de l’histoire remonte a Cinco de Mayo (en Espagnol dans le texte) de l’annee derniere. Il s’agit d’un fete officielle de l’Etat de Californie qui commemore une victoire militaire Mexicaine de 1862. C’est une fete qui passe inapercue presque partout au Mexique.

L’Etat de Californie l’a adoptee on ne sait plus trop pourquoi. Peut-etre que c’etait sous l’impulsion propre de la gauche cul-cul bien pensante locale aussi ignorante qu’avide demontrer sa sensibilite vis-a-vis des “minorites.” Peut-etre que cela a ete impose par un groupe de pression de Mexicano-Americains, raciste et fascisant qui se nomme lui-meme: “La Raza, ” “la Race.” (Ai-je meme l’imagination d’inventer de telles insanites?) En tous cas, selon mes sondages, forcement peu scientifiques mais tres frequents, le pourcentage d’Anglos capable de d’identifier les evenements ainsi commemores tourne autour de 0. Le pourcentage des jeunes d’origine hispanique monte jusqu’a 5. Il me faut ajouter pour etre honnete, qu’un 5% additionnel de ces derniers est en mesure d’affirmer: “Je ne sais pas ce que c’est mais je sais que ce n’est pas l’anniversaire de l’independance mexicaine.” En tous cas, cette commemoration a des effets positifs sur la consommation californienne de bieres mexicaines (d’ailleurs tres bonnes).

Et l’imperialisme francais alors, vous dites-vous? Et bien voila, en 1861, l’armee francaise du soi-disant Empereur Napoleon II (socialiste pour une bonne partie de sa carriere ploitique) a recu l’ordre d’aller attaquer la Prusse. Manque de chance, elle a tourne a doite au lieu d’a gauche. Elle s’est donc retrouvee au Mexique. De fil en aiguille, ell a fini par conquerir brievement tout le pays et a y installer un empereur fantome, un Autrichien obscur et palot. Ell profitait alors bien sur du fait que les Etat-Unis etaient eux-memes preocupes par le projet de s’entretuer pendant leur propre guerre civile. En attendant, au debut, les Mexicains de presidet Benito Juarez avaient bel et bien gagne contre le corps expeditionaire francais.

Pour en revenir a la Californie, le 5 Mai de l’annee derniere, dans une ecole sans importance d’une ville sans importance situee au sud de San Jose (Silicon Valley), des eleves d’origine mexicaine s’etaient presentes en class a portant des t-shirt figurant le drapeau mexicain. Des eleves Anglos avaient replique en enfilant des t-shirts a l ‘image du drapeau americain. Il y avait eu des bousculades entres eleves des deux groupes sans nulle doute echauffes par la presence de filles, aussi des deux groupes, en t-shirts sans dessins particuliers mais bien moulants.

La Cour d’Appel, en interdisant de fait de montrer le drapeau americain en Amerique a elle-meme fait la preuve d’une sorte de racisme, anti-blanc, cette fois-ci. En plus, elle a bien demontre son prejuge racial inconscient en identifiant comme “Mexicains” la categorie sociale que sa decision est censee proteger des bobos spirituels. Il est certain qu’elle voulait dire: “Americains d’origine mexicaine” car il n’y probablement pas ou que tres peu de “Mexicains” dans cette ecole. (N.B.: Toute personne nee aux Etats-Unis est citoyenne americaine, un point, c’est tout.)

PS Moi-meme, je suis tres satisfait de l’existence en Californie d’une forte emigration d’origine mexicaine (30% ou plus de la population de ‘Etat.) , y compris les sans-papiers. D’une part, se sont de gens faciles a aimer. D’autre part, ils apportent beacoup. Je crois meme bien que les enfants qu’ils font aujourd’hui supporteront la majeure partie du poids financier de la retraite Securite Social de mes propres enfants, vers 2045.

Conjugal Relations

Jacques Delacroix Liberty

My wife and I are discussing our investments. We don’t have investments because we belong to the hated 1% – wish we did – but because neither of us has a pension. She is annoyed because she does not understand some arcane point of finance.

Promise me you will die after me she blurts out. (She does not want to learn new, boring stuff.)

I don’t think so, I say, without missing a beat.

Selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, sexually ambivalent bastard, she throws out across the kitchen table!

The last charge holds no truth at all. I am a straightforward crude T and A guy. She is just doing her best to make me feel the horror of her hatred for me at that moment.

Yes, I know, men and women are almost exactly the same. That’s except when they are not. Would I ever think of calling her the same?

How about that coffee you promised me, I ask innocently?

I won’t prepare it because you refuse to promise that you will die even one second after me and you can put the coffee up your… (Note the illogicality.)

If you keep using this rude language, I threaten, I will put it on my blog.

You wouldn’t dare, she exclaims.

Done!

Small Town Exhibitionism

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , ,

I have had plenty of nasty things to say about the People’s Green Socialist Republic of Santa Cruz where I live. (I remain here for two reasons. First, its superb ocean sites, second I like to stay close to the enemy where I can keep an eye on it.) There are also some nice things to say about the town.

First, street musicians abound here, on weekends but also on any warm evening. I always give them money, sometimes if only so they may take music lessons. Incidentally, this is also a town with an immensely rich musical life after dark. I am mostly asleep at that time but I sleep pleasantly in the knowledge.

Second, there are many murals about. I hate a few of them but they are not the ones that show People’s Heroes in the 1920′s Bolshevik style, as you might expect. They are the ones done in simplistic fake-childish style, according to an old-man’s cliché-filled unimagination about childhood. I won’t name him because I can’t afford the lawsuit right now against a man who is successful enough to be becoming rich on my local businesses stubborn bad taste. (I am still awaiting the fat oil company check promised to me because I “deny” global warming!)

Third, this is a town with not one, not two, but three bookstores. Everyone can buy his books on Amazon after I am gone, as far as I am concerned. In the meantime, I want the eye candy of rows after rows of new books. I do my small share by agreeably paying the couple of dollars more per book the privilege costs me.

Fourthly this is a university town with many restaurants although I would call few of them very good: It’s hard to maintain high culinary standards where your average cook is a Mexican who has not idea of what the food he prepares is supposed to taste like and the average diner is 23 and has never tasted anything beyond burgers and pizza.

Fifthly, there is much arresting street spectacle on nice days. A couple of days ago, on a sunny morning, a young man is walking up the main drag with his skateboard in one hand, his laptop in the other, and his plastic cup of coffee in his teeth. Dynamism, athleticism, intellectualism, and resourcefulness all rolled into one person, a sight that makes you smile.

Then, two teenage girls also walk by. One, the busty one, is wearing a tight white t-shirt with yellow bananas printed and the word “bananas” in black in several places. She is carrying her purse against her chest in a futile attempt to cover up. I am guessing she was feeling very brave this morning in her room, choosing her daring-vulgar clothes. Then, she walked on Pacific Avenue, crossing paths with dozens of guys, eye rapists each and everyone of them. I wonder if she is thinking that Mom is right, some of the time.

By the way, how I am longing for a no holds-barred debate between women on relentless female exhibitionism! It would go a long way toward countering the pernicious feminist simplification that has dominated our culture for two decades. I wouldn’t get involved in such a debate, I am too smart for this. I wonder though why it is that at the gym, all men who wear shorts were long shorts while all women who wear shorts wear short shorts. Go figure!

The Republican Proposal on Illegal Immigrants and, the French Are Coming

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , ,

I am responding to a Republican radio and TV ad about illegal immigration. It’s presented as the Republican counter-proposal or response to Pres. Obama demand for “comprehensive immigration legislation.” It displays involuntarily some of the main fallacies Republicans commonly entertain in connection with illegal immigration and other topics. It demonstrates disturbing collective ignorance in my camp. (I am a registered Republican.) Here are four major fallacies in that short ad:

1 The ad continues to be based on the false notion that there exists an alternative to illegal immigration in the form of some orderly visa queue. In this perspective, illegal immigrants are rude, unprincipled line jumpers. Everyone hates such people.

In fact, there is no such queue. The average unmarried Mexican has no way (zero) way to come live in the US legally. (An unmarried Mexican can try to marry a US national or legal immigrant to gain a quick visa. Some do. This is hardly a more principled way to immigrate into this country than overstaying a tourist visa, for instance.)

2 The Republican proposal demands “no amnesty.” The Republican proposal contains an amnesty: amnesty for those who entered the country illegally. It rewards those who took the matter into their own hands against other foreigners who would like to move to the US but do not wish to violate laws to do so. Again, illegal immigration is the only way to enter the US and stay for almost everyone in the world.

There is no way to regularize the status of current illegals living in this country without an amnesty of some kind. I predict that neither the federal government nor the individual states will ever engage in the massive police action that would be required to hunt down illegal aliens in their homes, places of work, churches, and schools (including kindergartens). Everyone else also knows this to be true. Republican leaders have yet to acknowledge this simple fact of life.

3 The Republican proposal would require illegal aliens to “learn English” as a condition of their legalization. This is ill-informed as well as downright stupid.

First, illegal aliens are very busy learning English. They are all aware of the fact that knowing the main local language is a condition of real economic success in this country. To say otherwise is to make a tremendously xenophobic statement by implicitly calling immigrants stupid. That’s in addition to ignoring the facts on the ground.

Second: What are we going to do with Juan if he flunks his English midterm? Throw him over the border? How about Mr Lee, who has been here (illegally) for fifteen year and who owns a restaurant employing six people? Do we ship him back to Canton if he gets two C- in a row on his English grammar test?

Plus, what is the federal government going to do when some ill-intentioned academic reveals that a significant percentage of American-born US citizens also flunked the midterm, the same midterm?

Is this “obligation” to learn English, specifically, even constitutional? The last time I checked, the US had no official language. Why not Navajo?

This all smacks of the insane dreams of comfortably monolingual individuals who believe they would master Spanish if they could only clear a dozen Saturday mornings. Do these people take advice from anyone? Do they read anything?

4 “Securing the border” has become a mindless Republican incantation. It’s increasingly irrelevant for the purpose of immigration control, at least closing the southern border is. Several relevant points. At them same time as we were having our endless economic crisis killing thousands of jobs, the Mexican economy was doing better than before. And, Mexican population growth has almost ceased. The huge hordes of hungry Mexicans massed at the border to jump in and take over everything American have evaporated. Mexicans have almost stopped coming. Those who do use a student visa or a tourist visa and just don’t go home until they are good and ready.

Securing the border may serve a purpose in the context of a drug war. If that’s the issue, Republicans should have the coraje (same as “cojones” but more polite) to tell the truth.

And now, what the Republican leadership is not doing or not doing enough: Shout to the rooftops that legalizing illegals and awarding them citizenship are only artificially linked (by artful Democrats seeking free votes for generation). European countries have established successfully for many years the fact that citizens of another country can live in forever without acquiring political rights at all. (A recent well publicized Swiss vote on immigration does not deal with this matter.) Fellow immigrant Nikiforov and I explored this idea in depth in connection with the US and Mexico in our article “If Mexicans and Americans Could Cross the Border Freely” featured in the libertarian journal Independent Review.

Here is a real immigration issue the Republican leadership is not attending to: Tens of thousands of younger French people want to move to this country. The issue is so serious that there is a brand new French cabinet post dedicated to stemming the flow. Many of the would-be French migrants possess to a high degree the kind of training Silicon Valley companies say they can’t find. Many of the same well-educated French citizens who wouldn’t dream of opening a lollipop stand under French conditions discover that they possess a big entrepreneurial gene a couple of years after landing here. Let me also point out that the quality of food improves automatically after a surge of knowledgeable and demanding French customers. (Yes, some stereotypes are well founded.)

At this point, there is no legal way to bring in these high quality immigrants. Our immigration system is forcing into illegal immigration the most determined and least law-abiding segment among exactly the kind of immigrants we want.

Order, Order, Order

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , , , , , ,

In the conventional wisdom, as you become older, you tend to like order more and more. That is, with age, one is supposed to become more “conservative” in the traditional sense of the term. Personally, I have escaped the curse. Instead, I find myself resenting more and more the growing imposition of petty rules by public entities.

It began a few years back when the city of Santa Cruz banned sleeping. OK, let’s be honest, you may still sleep legally in your bed. The city made it illegal to sleep in public. It’s true that the homeless are a plague here. Many are in a near-constant state of NDUI (not driving under the influence). Many are poor lost souls who are a danger to themselves and occasionally to others. Thus, three or four years ago, a local shopkeeper walking to work was knifed to death in broad daylight. Her killer had spent the previous 48 hours in a shelter muttering about and to his Bible. No one reported him,of course because he had not done anything illegal until then. Next!

The ban on sleeping made me acutely uncomfortable at the time. First, it was plainly inhumane. Second, if you prevent human being from doing what their human nature demands, they will find another way to do it. So, informal camps proliferate in the wooded areas juxtaposing the town. Here, in Central California, we are in a period of prolonged drought. Do we need unattended campfires and campfires attended by people who don’t play with a full deck?

A petty use of power, municipal power, applied in a search for orderliness led to greater and far more dangerous disorder.

I don’t even know if there are enough night shelters for everyone who wants one. I know that there will always be sane but houseless people who don’t want to be in a shelter, by choice. A sizable part of me respects their choice. You may not force people in places where they don’t want to be without due process. The Constitution is completely clear on this. And, I am not in favor of more shelters anyway because I believe they attract the economically feeble to Santa Cruz thus aggravating the problem.

You don’t have to be a “soft” to want the Constitution respected.

Now, since then, there as been a multiplication of city rules. This happens while the crime rate plunges. The fewer crimes the more rules. The crime rate is tanking all over the country; Santa Cruz city rules can hardly take the credit. What am I to think?

Here is a quiz: The Santa Cruz City Council is dominated by:

a Republicans;

b Democrats;

c Leftists to the left of the Democratic Party

Not far is the independent harbor. I used to admire the Santa Cruz (Small Yacht) Harbor. It was the only government and quasi-government organization I knew that stayed clear of reliance on taxes. Harbor users -in their many guises- supported the maintenance of the harbor. They included boat slip renters like me, of course, but also beach goers whose coffee paid for the rent the coffee shop paid to the harbor in return for an excellent commercial location. Harbor users also included patrons of the good restaurant that dominates the harbor entrance with its million dollar view. The restaurant goers gladly paid solid parking fees, of course, and a portion is remitted to the harbor.

I also liked the way the harbor administration put to work underused resources such as the large general parking lot reserved for boat owners that tends to stand more than half empty after four pm. The harbor had an agreement with the self- same restaurant to hold musical barbecues once a summer week evening on the beach it, the harbor, administers. The restaurant got its profits from the sale of barbecued food and the harbor pocketed full parking fees from those not holding slip stickers. The arrangement drew crowds. It was all a little bit untidy but not much. Twice, on such a barbecue evening, I leaned spontaneously out of my truck to congratulate the officer directing parking and to assure him, unsolicited, that this particular slip owner, me, was not (NOT) inconvenienced at all.

And then, someone retired and there was a new sheriff in town. Under the new harbormaster, several things that were allowed became forbidden overnight. The harbor hired a full-time parking enforcer, like the town next door. Suddenly, the one harbor employee the average harbor user interacted with was the parking enforcement officer. This necessarily hostile and heartless functionary supplanted the traditional harbor officers who save boats, and sometimes lives, every weekend. The mood changed and not for the better. I am not speaking for bitterness about parking fines here; with my slip rental goes a permanent parking sticker permit.

Maintaining a stricter order often requires stricter rules that make most people unhappy. Eve if it’s only a little bit unhappy, the bad feeling accumulates.

Then, stand-up surfboards had to be segregated from boats. Boats are limited to 5 m/h inside the harbor anyway. Some boats under sail inside the harbor regularly exceed the speed limit. Those are steered by aces. How bad can a collision be under these conditions, really? Has there been a single collision involving a standup board? Did a boat owner complain about stand-up boards being in the way? Maybe. Did ten complain? I doubt it. (I have not asked; I don’t trust I would get a valid answer I could cite.) My point is that one can always find a complainer or two. If you handed out free ice cream to poor children and cleaned carefully afterward, there would be some curmudgeons to object. I am sure there are boat-owning slip renters who complain even about the ocean swells. But everyone knows that good harbors are bustling with activity. Those who detest the corresponding moderate disorderliness have no business in a harbor at all. They should be reminded of the fact that there is a long waiting list for their slips instead of listened to.

The art of civilized administration requires that complaints be ignored up to a point. It also includes remembering the second most important American maxim: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it until it is.”

Then, there are the new signs that shout at you that fishing from docks is “prohibited.” For as long as I remember, 20 year-plus, children fished from the docks. It was an excellent, healthy, commendable form of leisure for kids, including poor kids, if you ask me. Were there ever any accident as a result, even one? I don’t think so. The signs affirm further and vengefully that the prohibition is: “strictly enforced.” No joking with serious matters here! We are not kidding. Don’t even think of enjoying yourselves!

The posted “minimum” fine is $174. Think about it: Your otherwise well-behaved 12-year old gives you the slip to try to catch a sardine or two. He gets caught. You are into it for about twenty hours of minimum wage. This comes close to a violation of the Eighth Amendment, prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, I think. There may also be here a subtle breach of contract involved here. When I first rented a slip in the harbor, fishing from the docks was common practice. The locked dock that was part of the rental gave me special access to a pleasant fishing spot. Then, after twenty years, the contract becomes unilaterally modified to my detriment. The harbor did not bother to re-negotiate the contract.

I agree that this is a very small kind of tyranny but it’s tyranny all the same. The habit of being oppressed nearly always begins small in democratic countries. Our tiny liberties are eroded slowly until we don’t even remember we ever had them.

In the same period, I have heard the crew of one of the few remaining commercial fishing boats left in the harbor complain that they are made to feel unwelcome. I have no proof that their allegation is correct but, I wonder, why would they make it up? It jibes with the other forms of turning of the screw I mention. There is no doubt that the harbor would be neater without fishing boats. Fish smells and the rushed commercial fishermen drop the occasional dead fish into the harbor water. And, well, it’s a yacht harbor, after all. And, by the way, if slips only went to middle-aged nuns who work as librarians, the harbor would be even neater.

Occasionally, I take my grand-daughter to buy live crabs directly from a boat. It’s an expedition for her. It’s unforgettable. It shows her that some food does not come from the supermarket. But who am I to lay claim to such privilege? And who the hell are the commercial fishermen to insist on making a living from a harbor originally created by the Army Corps of Engineers with tax money?

On 2/3/14, coming out of a restaurant, my family and I were treated to a wonderful geyser-like spout of water reaching much higher than a three storied building. No, it was not a whale; the scene was a couple of miles inland, on a busy commercial artery, at a street intersection. We watched in utter fascination for more than fifteen minutes. (I posted a still picture of the event on my Facebook. Look for it.) I am obviously no expert, but I believe that while I looked on several hundreds of thousands of toilet flush- equivalents of city water were lost forever. I know, I know, accidents happen; no system is perfect. But why did it take so long to cap the leak? There is a fire station five or six blocks away.

I almost forgot to tell you: At the very same time, the same evening, there was an important meeting of the Santa Cruz Water Commission to make recommendations about water rationing to the City Council in view of the current drought.

Would I make this up? Would I dare? Do I have the talent?

In my immediate surroundings, the only rule or law I have seen abolished in the past twenty years or so concerns dogs. They used to be prohibited on the main commercial drag of Santa Cruz, Pacific Avenue. The prohibition has been rescinded. Dog owners are numerous and determined. Their victory renews my faith a little in democracy. I wish I could cite more examples though.

Sometimes, the ugly thought crosses my mind that public entities are increasingly run for the benefit of their nominal employees. Karl Marx was almost right about classes, maybe . (See, on this topic: “Karl Marx Was Right (Pretty Much)“)

More on local government action: “Coyotes: How Government Bureaucrats Think“

“Illegal Immigration: Bad Faith and Mental Confusion”

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , ,

I wouldn’t change a word to this old posting.

“Bizarre Conservative Ideas About Immigration”

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics

This old posting is suddenly relevant again. Go to indented paragraph directly if you are in a hurry.

The Keystone Pipeline

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , ,

You may have heard recently that the appropriate federal agency declared  the Keystone pipeline would pose no significant dangers to the environment. I doubt this will stop the green fanatics. Nor is the probability that oil no refined and used in this country will be mostly exported to China where environmental laws are lax and not often enforced. Rationality is not their forte, as a rule.

It appears that there may be a chance to influence the decision to build or not via an on-line petition. I don’t know what is the probability of its working is but the cost seems so low it would be a pity not to try a click. Besides, enough signatures may make Mr Obama squirm a little irrespective of the decision he makes.

Go to:   buildKXLnow.com [it’s actually buildKXLnow.org – bc]

Go to: “Go to Make Your Voice Heard,” [it’s  actually the ‘Take Action Now’ tab that you’ll want to click on – bc]

A simple sign-up box will appear.

A Zoo in the Streets

Jacques Delacroix Current Events

A couple of years ago the kind of youngish women who spend two hours a day seven/seven at the beach starting showing up in the streets in tights, with nothing on top. Before I could catch my breath, the same streets were turned into zoos. I mean women who don’t spend two hours a day at the gym, or an hour a week, began joining the fad. Then, it was camels on one side (camel toes, actually), hippopotamuses on the other side.

The total horror! It makes you wonder if American women have any real girlfriends, friends close enough to say, “Don’t do it honey,” or boyfriends men enough to say, “Who do you think you are going with in this outfit, honey?”

I am almost sure this does not happen in France because French women have mean girlfriends.

I have been neglecting this blog because I am busy with the nth proofing of my manuscript: I Used to Be French: An Immature Autobiography. I will be back soon, I think.

Nice Weather, Female Exhibitionism, and Scientific Research

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Religion , , , , , ,

Something interesting happened in Santa Cruz the past two or even three weeks. (I write on January 25 2014.) Or rather, something did not happened that should have. (I am alert to the dog that did not bark, as in Sherlock Holmes.)

For a long time now in the winter of 2013-014, comments on the weather have been in the national news much more frequently than is usual.

It’s been rather warmer here in Santa Cruz this January than it usually is in the middle of August. The Japanese cherry tree across the street has even been fooled into blooming! Although it’s a small city, I think Santa Cruz is a world center for warmism and for climatism (also for organic foodism, for vegetarianism, for nutism – it means eating only nuts – for deadly bicyclism,* for primitive feminism, for obligatory lesbianism, for residual Trotskysm, for holistic medicine, and perhaps also for holistic plumbing, I am not completely sure.)

Yet, yet, I never heard a peep through the local grapevine in the past few weeks about how the unseasonably warm weather was another proof of global warming. I only refer to the informal grapevine; I wouldn’t know if the local press had said anything. I don’t read it much; I have many unimportant things to do.

I have two explanations for this apparent surprising silence, one pretty sure, one tentative.

First, warm weather in January puts people in a good mood, even in California, even if they don’t want to be in a good mood. For one thing, the young women were walking around for days with the smug little look of nearly all women, everywhere, who get to show a bit of skin at a completely unexpected time. Their ebullient mood is catchy. The young men appreciate though they have been taught to avert their eyes lest they be accused of visual rape. The old guys frankly stare and smile, trying to remember why they do. (I know wherewith I speak!) The older women don’t seem to mind; it brings back warm memories, I would guess.

How about this: The strength of a national feminist movement is inversely correlated with mean winter temperatures?

My second, and tentative hypothesis about the lack of sententious comments about the warm weather in California is that ordinary people have finally caught on: You cannot argue that unexpectedly high temperatures in one fifth of the country are proof of global warming while maintaining that unprecedented low temperatures, at the same time, in three fifth of the countries do not contradict this view. You can’t have it both ways.

Of course, there is that other, newer beast, “climate change.” It goes like this:

If it’s warmer than usual, it’s because of man-made greenhouse gases. If it’s colder, it’s because of man-made greenhouse gases.

I laugh, I laugh stupidly but I could actually see this kind of argument made in a legitimate manner. You could try to show oscillations around a baseline. The baseline would have to be fixed. You couldn’t chose another baseline every time you did not like the weather facts. You would have to show that the oscillations have greater amplitude than was/is the case in some other test period or place (planet?). The greater amplitude oscillations would have to last for some reasonable period (not six years, for example). Finally, you would have to make a credible effort to show that high-magnitude oscillations are causally linked to greenhouse gas emissions. You couldn’t simply show two graphs looking a little bit alike and beginning and ending at times of your convenience, for example.

You would also have to publish prominently all the results of well designed research that indicated no greater oscillations than usual or no link between greater oscillations and the magnitude of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Honestly, you would also have to explain which man-made emissions do what: car exhausts, air pollution from nuclear plants, cattle belches. (The seconds don’t exist, I am just toying with your minds; the third is not a joke at all; look it up.)

Note that I did not use at all the word “proof.” A reasonably objective demonstration satisfying all the above would give this denier pause. Also, climate scientists who, I am told, overwhelmingly “believe” in climate change would have to make an creditable effort to stop the irresponsible media bullshit spread every day in their names. (More on the last point another day soon.)

Not much to ask and a tall order!

* See my piece “Global Warming and Child Sacrifice” at Facts Matter

Why Young Women Are Stupid (If They Are): A Scientific Inquiry

Jacques Delacroix History , , , ,

The Victoria’s Secret catalog mailing list is several tens of thousand times longer than the mailing list of the National Organization For Women. The feminist wheel has turned enough for brave male social scientists like me finally to consider from a scientific viewpoint an issue that has been with us forever.

Here is the issue: Anyone who has ever tried to win an argument with a reasonably well-informed eleven-year old girl and lost knows that something pretty bad must happen – on the mental front – to the females of our species shortly after they reach that age. (A lexicographic irony is that “front” is the French word for “forehead.” )

I won’t affirm that young women tend to be stupid, for two reasons. First, it would offend my young Indian niece, back in Calcutta. (The parenthetical part of the title is in deference to her feelings.) Second, as my super-intelligent wife often states in a an accusatory tone of voice, I am still a kind of closet liberal. This is the same wife who suspects Attila the Hun was kind of a big softie with his silly cut-off heads of his enemies hanging from his saddle. Incidentally, I owe my wife many of my late-life insights about womanhood.

As so often happens in a the Verstehen school of sociological philosophy, my first grasp of the problem came to me during a moment of idleness. I was contemplating my twelve-year old son watching television with his index finger in his nose up to the elbow. The incongruous thought hit me: “In two or three years at most, some pretty young woman is going to think him irresistible!” I started chuckling when the double thought crossed my mind that I was facing a veritable scientific quandary and possibly the seeds of its solution.

Now, to get a handle on the problem, we need to go back a few thousand years, a few hundreds of thousands of years actually. Let’s remember that we, humans, have only known agriculture and animal husbandry for about 10,000 years. Both were discovered or invented in the Middle-East, widely defined, or in India. (An Indian friend of mine keeps telling me that India already had advanced agriculture when my European ancestors were still trying to figure out how to come down from the trees. That is pure slander; my ancestors walked from East Africa; they did not brachiate.) Before that, for as long as there have been humans, and proto-humans, they led a precarious existence.

At the center of this precariousness lied the cave bear. Imagine a carnivorous creature with ten inch-canines standing ten feet tall when irritated and weighing in at one thousands pounds. (That would be the smaller ones.) Our ancestors hanged out near cave bears much of the time for two reasons. First, they used the same caves as the bears to protect themselves from the elements. Second, they soon discovered in themselves a predilection for the carrion cave bears left lying around, like all predators.

With this propinquity, meals where our ancestors were themselves the main course, and close-calls, unavoidably occurred frequently. That we survived as a species nevertheless calls for an explanation. Here it is below. Although it’s somewhat speculative, it’s in full accordance with what we know of the more general forms of human behavior and with evolutionary theory both.

Grandpa and Grandma Caveperson most likely lived in small extended family groups of fifteen and to fifty people. There are good technical reasons for this explanation centered around what semi-nomadic humans can carry and, especially, the number of babies and small children. In close encounters with cave bears, you can be sure there were young males, teen-age boys, who stayed behind to throw stones at the monsters. Probably no one could lob rocks heavy enough, or with enough force, to do serious damage to any bear. Yet, an avalanche of rocks could delay the bear long enough to allow many, or some, women with small children, and pregnant women to scamper away.

This survival strategy poses one problem though: The young rock throwers must have suffered a high rate of mortality. Thus, the very traits of brashness, courage, and accuracy that saved the group at Time 1 were in constant danger of disappearing with those who bore those traits and thus to be unavailable at Time 2.

Something had to compensate for the high mortality among the young rock throwers. That something is obvious: They had to be able to reproduce disproportionately. Do the arithmetic: If one in ten of the wimpy youths dies before siring offspring but one in two of the tough ones, after a short while, the propensity to stay behind and taunt the bears will disappear in the population. That is, unless the surviving rock artists manage somehow to have more than twice more children that their timid brothers and cousins. It turns out that the best solution to this quandary, widely observed in many species, including humans, is female mating choice.

If young human females actively wanted to mate with rock throwers, the right traits could be transmitted down the generations forever. But of course, intelligent young women wanted to have nothing to do with the morons. Accordingly, they reproduced, and their children survived, at an inferior rate. Thus, the traits supporting simple good judgment had a tendency to thin out in the relevant populations.

Female air-heads, who were hot for the delinquents, passed on their genes in large numbers to both their female and their male children. And so on, to this day where we encounter few cave bears. These things are hard-wired. It takes a while for a trait that was useful previously to vanish from a population because it has lost its usefulness. The trait may never disappears if it does not become dysfunctional in the current situation. And this, my friends is why young women would be stupid (if they were stupid).

Scientific note: One condition that would hasten the demise of female stupidity would be if intelligent women had more children surviving to reproductive age than stupid women. There is no reason to believe that they do, overall. By the way, that’s what the phrase “survival of the fittest” means: Having children who themselves have children.

If you are of the female persuasion, Dear Reader, and if my sage observations make you livid, or red with anger, as the case may be, stop and ask yourselves: How many of your girlfriends actively demonstrate their erotic attraction to bad boys?